by Roger Hobbs
I wanted to send a message.
I went to the side of the SUV and opened the fuel cap, then fed the wire and cloth into the tank until I felt it hit the bottom. There wasn’t a whole lot of gas in there, which was a good thing. Less gas means more oxygen. I made sure the end of the rag was good and soaked with fuel before pulling it out again. Once I did, I pushed the other end of the wire down into the tank until it hit bottom, so this way the whole rag was soaked in gasoline, including a little two-inch tuft protruding from the fuel cap. I backed away from the car a little bit and held the torch lighter to the gasoline-soaked fabric and waited for it to blacken and shrivel up. I tossed the lighter through the car window and walked away.
I opened the other Suburban with the wireless key. I got in, started the engine and pulled out back on the highway with my hazards on so anyone in the right lane could see me coming. I checked my watch. Exactly 4 a.m. It was still too early for the car-rental companies to be open, and I needed to switch vehicles soon if I wanted to stay inconspicuous. The Wolf would have eyes all over the city looking for a black Suburban with these plates. And I had to assume the Fed knew the make and model as well. If she could find the hotel room, she’d certainly be smart enough to figure that out too. How many rental cars could have been parked in the Chelsea garage? Ten? Twenty, at most?
Behind me, the torn fabric burned slowly, like cotton does, until the flames crawled down the fuel pipe. Fumes don’t usually ignite by themselves, but liquid gasoline mixed with oxygen does. The rag had to burn all the way down to the fuel in the tank.
I was a hundred yards away when it did. The engine exploded and all three-quarter tons jumped two feet to the left. A second later, the fire ignited the plastic, fabric and leather in the cabin and sent the whole car up. It would burn like that for hours, if they’d let it. The Suburban must’ve been worth eighty grand with all those options, but it would be scrap metal by the time I got to my exit. The flames illuminated the pine trees like a giant bonfire and sent smoke drifting across the highway. I drove until the dancing lights were just a speck in the distance and the only thing I could smell was the salt coming in off the ocean.
I had to go be a rat.
29
The highway back toward the city was as empty as the Sahara, the Suburban’s headlights revealing only pavement and the faded yellow lines down the center of the road. Off to the side were casino billboards. With the SUV going sixty miles an hour, they all seemed to blend together, like they were caught by a time-lapse camera. The wind was coming in hard against the windshield now, carrying bits of trash and sand.
I wasn’t four miles into the drive before one of my cell phones rang. It was still in the bag I’d left on the passenger seat. I fished it out and saw that the incoming number was the one Rebecca Blacker had given me on her card. I flipped the phone open and sandwiched it between my cheek and my shoulder so I could talk and drive.
“Took you long enough,” I said.
“Jack Morton’s a real pain in the ass, you know that?” she said. “I searched that room for two hours before I found your goddamn note.”
“I was beginning to think you’d somehow missed it. And don’t you ever sleep? I didn’t expect you to call until morning.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m back on vacation.”
“Can I ask why you were searching that room?”
“I found the getaway car,” she said. “Thought you’d know something about it, also that I might find something linking you to the scene.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Sure you don’t,” she snarled.
“What happened?”
“The ACPD found it two hours ago. What’s left of it, anyway. It was blown to hell in a building out by the old airfield. Somebody covered it with enough fuel to raze the whole goddamn place. All that’s left is a bunch of twisted metal and a couple parts made of that heat-tempered material that doesn’t melt. It took an hour just to identify the make and model.”
“Tough break.”
“You know, Jack, I’ve seen a lot of torched getaway cars before, but I’ve never seen a car blow itself up a full seventeen hours after the job went down.”
“You think somebody got there before you.”
“Two people. We found footprints at the scene. Fresh ones. You wouldn’t happen to wear size-eleven shoes, would you?”
“I prefer boots. Better ankle support.”
“If you’re just going to play games with me, I’ll put out a warrant.”
“No, you won’t,” I said. “You don’t have anything on me.”
“Then give me something,” Rebecca said. “You’re the one who left me this number, and I refuse to believe you did it just to fuck with me. You wanted me to call you. At least tell me why.”
“Are you tracing this call?”
“Excuse me?”
“This phone has a built-in global-positioning system,” I said. “They all do, these days. The chip in the back sends out a blip every fifteen seconds with its exact location. Coordinates, down to about ten meters. Latitude and longitude. That means you should be able to figure out where I am. Come on, you’re a Fed. You should be all over this.”
“You want me to know where you are?”
“I want you to know where I’ve been. Specifically, where this phone has been for the past hour or so. And if you go back long enough, I’m sure you’ll see I was nowhere near your burned-up getaway car.”
“You could just tell me where you were, you know.”
“I was out along the highway. But you’ll want the coordinates.”
“And what were you doing out along the highway?”
“Just taking a drive.”
“At three in the morning.”
“I like the night air. Good for the lungs.”
“You stumble across anything interesting?”
“Just do it, will you?”
“Are you helping me,” Rebecca said, “or just trying to piss me off?”
“Neither. I’m telling you I went for an evening drive and left my phone on.”
“You’re so full of it.”
“You want to know where I was or not?”
“Honestly? I want your shoe size.”
“Ten and a half. Wide.”
A pause. I could hear her breathing. Her breath had a simple, quick cadence to it, like she hadn’t had the time to take a deep breath and let it out in months, maybe years. I could hear her fingers on a computer keyboard.
Then she said, “We should meet.”
“Is talking to me on the phone a problem?”
“I’d prefer to talk face-to-face.”
“You just said you might put a warrant out on me. I think I prefer a little distance, for the time being.”
“I’m not after you. Marcus Hayes can rob Fort Knox for all I care. He’s not my case. All I want are the people who turned this city into a bloodbath this morning, so I can go back down to Cape May and salvage what’s left of these shitty two weeks. And considering that burning white Dodge, I think you owe me.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything about that.”
“You want me to go out along the highway or not?”
“All right. Clearly we’re both awake, so let’s meet in the hotel coffee shop in an hour. A place like that never closes.”
“Which hotel?”
“You know the one,” I said. “You spent half the night there moving furniture around.”
“Fruitlessly, I might add. You didn’t even take the chocolates off the pillows.”
“How’d you find that room, anyway?”
“I told you,” Rebecca said. “I’m very good at what I do.”
“One hour.”
“See you then.”
I ended the call, then removed the plastic cover from the back of the phone and pulled out the battery. Under that was the SIM card, which gave the phone a number and made records of all the incoming and outgoing calls. I took it o
ut and snapped it in half between my fingers, then flicked the pieces out the window. I looked at my watch. Quarter after 4 a.m.
Twenty-six hours to go.
30
When I passed May’s Landing, I punched Marcus’s number into another phone and waited as the screen turned from black to green. The phone rang and Marcus’s man picked up before the third ring, like he was sitting there waiting for the call. I glanced at my watch. It was almost 1:30 a.m. in Seattle, so Marcus should’ve been fast asleep. Instead his man was poised and ready. The reception was low.
“The Five Star Diner,” he said.
“Put him on.”
“Who is this?”
“Nobody.”
Things were quiet as he walked the phone into another room. People like Marcus can afford to have a guy with a flat Midwestern accent screening all the calls. This one’s voice was like cough syrup. The diner had three lines that I knew of, and each was always answered the same way. The guy would say the name of the diner, and if you didn’t convince him you were important in thirty seconds or less, he’d hang up and you’d never get the boss on the line.
Marcus came on a few seconds later. He sighed and sounded tired, but there was something else in his sigh. He sounded afraid.
“Hello?” he said.
“Marcus, it’s me.”
“Jack. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for hours. What happened?”
“You tell me, Marcus.” I said. “You think I don’t know you set me up?”
He went quiet. I took the exit that would take me back through the pine barrens.
Marcus had stopped breathing for a beat or two, then let out a breath to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The Wolf knew your plan long before Ribbons and Moreno even got close. Now, you’re too smart to underestimate a man like him, so either you’re working an angle on this I don’t understand or you’re much stupider than I thought.”
“That’s not possible,” he said. “There’s no way the Wolf knew the plan.”
“I talked to him myself. He tried to kill me.”
“Jack, he’s got to be reaching. He has to be. If the Wolf really knew I planned to rip him off with the federal payload, why did he agree to the deal? Why did he even let Moreno and Ribbons into the city? He would have put bullets in their heads before they even got past the pine barrens.”
“He said he was planning on double-crossing you. He was going to leave you holding the money when it blew, so you’d take the fall for it. Now he’s asked me to put the wired money on your plane and wait for it to blow up. But you knew he’d try that, didn’t you? You were working another angle.”
“What the hell did he do?”
“Have you been watching the news? Do you know about the third shooter? The Wolf told me that was his hit.”
There was silence over the other end of the phone for a second.
“You met with him,” Marcus said.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Jesus,” Marcus said. “You’re working for him.”
I sniffed.
“For all I know,” Marcus said, “the Wolf’s wired into this call right now, coaching you through this conversation word by word. What did he offer you?”
“Your head on a platter. But I didn’t take it.”
“I should hang up.”
“Listen,” I said. “There’s going to be a double homicide on the news in the morning. Two of the Wolf’s men out in the salt marsh got shot through the head. That should be proof enough where my loyalties are. As far as I know, this line is clean. Just you and me. But if you don’t start talking, I can’t promise our relationship will stay friendly. If you don’t tell me everything, I have no reason to keep your best interests in mind, okay? You can’t owe a favor to a dead man.”
Marcus didn’t say anything.
“You are a dead man,” I said. “You understand that, right? I bet that if the Wolf can’t set you up with the trap money and send you to prison, he’ll try to kill you outright. He certainly wants to kill you, Marcus. Right now, I’m your best chance of stopping that. So talk.”
“I didn’t set you up, Jack.”
Marcus took a breath and exhaled, his breath coming in big gasping bursts like he was having a panic attack. I listened to him hyperventilate for a while and thought about how much he liked to play games. He wasn’t the kind of guy who freaked out when he got caught in a lie. He was a calm, collected liar and a world-class poker player. He’d do this if he really and truly thought he might have something to lose, or else it was just for effect. Even the way he was breathing could be part of the setup.
“Here’s my problem,” I said. “If the Wolf was behind the third shooter, why did he kill Moreno and try to kill Ribbons right then? Why didn’t he wait until Moreno and Ribbons had gotten well away from the casino before robbing them? Waiting as little as twenty minutes would have doubled his chance of success and limited his police exposure. So either he’s lying to me or you are.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Marcus said. “I really don’t.”
I knocked the phone against the side of my head in frustration. Marcus was messing with me and we both knew it. The whole conversation felt like a brick at the bottom of my stomach.
“Okay,” I said. “But you’re going to tell me before this thing’s over.”
“Do you have the money, at least?”
“No. Ribbons is still in the wind.”
“How the hell can that be?”
“I think he’s dead.”
“What?”
“He was shot,” I said. “I found that white Dodge they used. The parts that weren’t totaled from multiple crashes or shot through with bullet holes were covered with blood. I’m no expert on gunshot injuries, but I can’t imagine someone losing that amount of blood and living very long. Considering we haven’t heard from him, I think he’s dead. And even if he’s still alive, he can’t have much time left. We’ve got to start watching the hospitals and morgues.”
“Ribbons won’t go to a hospital.”
“He’s dying.”
“He doesn’t care. He’s a two-time felon. If he gets caught, he goes away for life. No parole after twenty years, no plea bargain, no reduced sentence with good behavior. Life. Guys like him would rather bleed out on the streets than die in prison.” Marcus paused. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking Ribbons is holed up, then. He must’ve gone someplace to hide, hoping that he could ride it out, and by the time the drugs wore off and he realized how grievous his injuries were, it was too late. You know, like an old dog crawling under the stairs so it can die alone. But I’m not sure he wouldn’t call for an ambulance. I’ve met a lot of people who told me they’d rather die than go back to prison, and every single one of them was full of shit.”
Marcus said nothing.
“I need to know if you can think of any places he might’ve gone to. Places that were important to him. Where he could lay low for a while. And don’t tell me about any motels. A guy bleeding like that can’t check in anywhere.”
“Maybe he went back to the scatter.”
A scatter’s where a guy sleeps the night before a job. It’s different from the place where the job is planned. You don’t shit where you eat. Heisters don’t ever work in the scatter. They don’t talk, they don’t drink, they don’t eat, they don’t clean their guns. They do nothing but sleep there. A scatter’s set up so you can get out in thirty seconds flat if you have to. Heisters don’t bullshit in the scatter. They respect it. You’re never ever supposed to return there. Then again, you’re not supposed to get shot, either.
“You’ve got the address?” I said.
Marcus gave it to me slowly, like he thought I needed to write it down. I said the name of the place back to him, just to make sure I’d heard it right.
“What do I do about the Wolf?” I said.
“Don’t get killed.”
; “That’s not what I mean. You two are at war now. You realize that, don’t you? You’re going to have to kill him or else he’s going to kill you.”
“Just make sure you get that cash,” Marcus said. “If it blows and the GPS syncs up, there’s no way to stop this thing. I’ll take care of my business. You just take care of yours.”
“Got it.”
We were silent for a second.
“Marcus,” I said finally, “if I find out you’re setting me up in any way, or even thought about setting me up, I am going to find you and kill you. I hope you understand that.”
I pressed the end button and threw the phone out the window. It got sucked back by the wind coming over the side of the car and hit the rear passenger window before spinning off to the side of the road and exploding into a dozen pieces.
31
The diner, a free-standing American joint with a neon sign featuring a steaming cup of coffee, was located in an otherwise empty concrete lot across from a boarded-up strip mall. Through the big glass windows you could see everything that was going on inside. A man in a white hat was greasing down the grill and the only waitress was refilling the coffee machine behind the bar. Two customers were sobering up in a booth near the door and a young busboy mopping the floors all around them. He was wearing headphones.
Alexander Lakes was seated in a booth toward the back.
He was trying to play it cool, but he was obviously nervous. His back was as straight as a board and he kept looking around like he was expecting something to jump out at him. There was a matrix of black coffee stains on the table in front of him. Even though he seemed quite alert, he didn’t notice me. When the chime went off as I came through the door, he didn’t look up. I came up from behind and he jumped when I put my hand on his shoulder.
